R.B.I. Baseball 14 Officially Announced For Consoles and Mobile

In a surprise announcement last night Major League Baseball announced the return of R.B.I Baseball for release this spring with “multi-platform distribution across current and next-generation consoles and smartphones and tablets”.

It would seem likely R.B.I. will be considered arcade game. SCEA’s announcement of MLB 14: The Show declared it to be “the first and only MLB simulation for next-gen consoles”. However they did leave an opening by noting they were only referencing “disc-based simulations”.

At the time it was pointed out that the phrasing left an opening for an arcade game or a digital downloadable game…something done intentionally with the knowledge of R.B.I Baseball 14 on the horizon. So the Xbox One will not be without baseball altogether, and the 360 will have a new baseball game, but it probably won’t be an attempt to challenge The Show. The only other thing we know for sure is it won’t be a simulation game with a full retail release.

A dated reference to the the game from the ESRB had R.B.I. Baseball being published by Take Two. It’s unclear whether that is the case with this ’14 edition. However it is being developed by Major League Baseball Advanced Media. Even if Take Two is publishing it would not be from 2K Sports’ Virtual Concepts or any other development studio owned by Take Two.

Among the many properties owned, operated, or produced by MLB Advanced Media is the league’s website, all 30 team websites, MLB radio, the popular MLB At Bat app for mobile devices, and a few mobile games.

With no company willing to pay the third party licensing fee to make MLB games the league has taken it upon themselves to produce a product. No details on what else to expect like whether it’ll be a retail release or digital download or if it is a brand new undertaking or just an update of the 80’s game. Interestingly the official website is housed in the “Fantasy” section of the MLB site which could have some sort of meaning around the theme or style of the game.

Interesting. I actually hope they do take the simulation approach. It’s always good to have competition, and it’ll be nice to have a sim baseball game for the XBox One.

MoneyMayweather

I never played R.B.I baseball on NES or SNES so this is exciting for me.

raczilla

It’s a fantastic game that still holds up. The Tecmo Super Bowl of baseball games IMO.

Casor_Greener

Guarantee it will be trash

Rick

this will be a joke of a game..

Tarheel

Sorry Xboxers…this doesn’t sound like a simulation.

fantasyboi

Regardless, I think The Show needs to step up and release some info so they don’t lose steam. I have seen that a lot of people are not very happy that nothing is really being released. Maybe now that they know there will be another baseball game they might push sumthin out. who knows tho.

Carl Sullivan

So cool, I remember playing RBI back in the day on the old NES with my brother. I am glad someone has decided to step up and take over the baseball world for next gen.

Keith.

Pretty telling that none of the sports gaming media got any advance scoop on this, and that they have nobody at SCEA, 2K, MS or MLB to turn to for comment. Guess if it doesn’t involve EA, they pretty much know about as much as the rest of us, and find out when we do.

http://pastapadre.com/ pastapadre

MLBAM has been asked for comment and will not provide any further details.

Keith.

Here we are, a full day later, and NOBODY on the sports gaming media has been given a single screen shot, fact sheet, video, or anything beyond the initial game press release. Like I said, if it isn’t EA, we’re all on equal footing.

http://pastapadre.com/ pastapadre

Huh? They announced the game last night. What the hell do you want? They’ll send out info and assets when they decide to.

If you think outlets can just magically gather this stuff then why isn’t there more on The Show now? Or why hasn’t there been screenshots for the unannounced FIFA World Cup 2014?

I don’t get your act here of not understanding how information in gaming flows. Its controlled by the publishers.

Keith.

When it comes to EA sports games, somebody in the sports gaming media usually has the inside scoop. EA’s controlled the sports gaming media for a long time now. When it comes to The Show, NBA 2k, Backbreaker, and any other non-EA sports game,however, we’re all generally on the same footing when it comes to information. So your (and OS’, Polygon’s, Kotaku’s, etc.) guesses are as good as mine when it comes to what this game is going to entail.

DetRichardMoore

This is untrue. EA UFC was announced way before there were any pics for it, not to mention the lack of information when EA Sports Grand Slam came out a while back.

Also, that sounds crazy to suggest that not only does EA have /every/ media site, and that’s /every/ one since there has been no information or screenshots of this game released. But the crazier part to suggest, is that 2K, and SCEA, and every other company sees this hypothetical scenario and just decides not to advertise or promote their games, other than through their own channels (except for when they release information to IGN, and OS, and Polygon and Kotaku?). I don’t see where you’re going with this.

The biggest problem I have with this whole thing is, you had no problem with Pasta or this ‘inside scoop’ nonsense back when the lawsuit articles and so on were consistently flowing. Nor did you last year when other articles of the sort came out.

Now that NBA2K14 has been getting substantial and warranted coverage on its problems, you seem to be anti-PastaPadre.

fantasyboi

we can clearly see that Keith is fat…give him a break guys….

HughJardon

Keith, you must be the biggest freaking jag-off I’ve ever seen on this board. Get out of your step-mom’s basement, dude.

Casor_Greener

Damn Bro, this vendetta is getting out of hand

bltzkrieg666

Hang on Pasta…………wait 4 it………..Kruk is about to give you a stock quote and a useless reference to VG Chartz any minute now…..SMH :

jr

Smfh. Just give up

Skihawks

This is awesome news. I hope it has the original version included. This game was fun.

gramme

This better not be a horrible remake like Tecmo Bowl Throwback. If it is they shouldnt even bother.

Yausser1017

Pasta – any idea on why SCEA is being so silent about MLB 14 the show? They haven’t even set a hard release date. This game is the whole reason I got a PS4

http://pastapadre.com/ pastapadre

I wouldn’t be surprised if they moved it back a couple weeks. Closer to the start of the regular season.

There’s no competition now in their minds so they could either release stuff earlier, or later, depending on their strategy.

Skopin

As long as it’s a finished product when it does release. Pushing the release back a few weeks from normal isn’t a bad thing if it’s not ready.

bltzkrieg666

Hate it when they go all 2k and suppress the info. Nothing good ever comes from that. Full disclosure and allow the community to tell you how its looking. Never understood why sports game devs don’t take the MMO approach to games. They should be putting out betas, getting feedback and improving the game FOR launch and not waiting to get crushed after the fact.4

Casor_Greener

Because it wont be much different than last year

Ray D

Good news. Nice to have another game for those people who have Xbox 360 or Xbox One.